[sdiy] The extreme low cost of audio gear

[Cornutt, David K]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: R. D. Davis [mailto:rdd at rddavis.org]
 
> Hmmm... those cheap little mixers appear to be of dubious quality in
> comparison to older analogue mixers.  The controls are cramped,
> designed for people with little hands and little fingers, they're not
> pleasing the the eye, not looking at all like the well made older
> analogue mixing consoles with the larger faders spaced wider apart,
> etc.  They lack real VU meters (I despise digital/LED "meters").  The
> construction isn't solid and designed for ease of repairability.  One
> gets what one pays for, the old saying goes.

All true enough, but you have to keep in mind the target
market.  They aren't going after the Allen & Heath market
with these, or even the Mackie market really.  I bought one
of the little Behringer six-channel mixers for our
dance club.  For what we use it for, it's fine.  
We use one stereo channel for the music (comes from a
Mac laptop) and one mic for PA.  It's a huge improvement
over the crappy Rat Shack DJ mixer we had, and it has
real mic preamps so we could upgrade the mic too.
(Shure PG57, the low-cost version of the SM57.  Boomy
as hell; I've got it EQ'ed to within an inch of its life.
Still lots better than the off-brand dynamic mic we had.)
The controls actually aren't bad; the knobs are about
the same size and spacing as one would find on a decent
desk mixer, and the pots feel OK.  It does use pots
instead of faders for volume, but it's not critical
for this application.  Hey, dance instructors are
fiddling with it.  Now if I can just get them trained to
leave the phantom power switch alone...